Oh My, has it really been 18 months?

I guess it has!  I'm not even sure what I've been doing in all of that time, way too many sleeps ago.  Although it was a little stressful around June 2012.... I turned 40 and unbeknownst to me, my fabulous husband had organized a surprise party for me.  Now, the surprise was not only that I didn't know that it was happening, but that it was happening in my own house.  OMG the shame of having my friends come over and vacuum my house and change beds, as we had house guests too - all whilst I was out with my daughters being pampered at the nail salon.  I haven't received any anonymous magazine cutout letter blackmail notes so either the house wasn't that bad, or they're too traumatized and are still suffering from PTSD.....

The surprise was beyond anything I could have imagined, I still tear up now, must be soppy now that I'm older!  We got home and were barred access to the house from the garage.  Then I was allowed in and told to go to the basement, where I was met with 40-50 people shouting surprise.  The biggest one being my best American friend Marge.  She and her husband emigrated to the UK in Feb 2012 and there they were standing behind the bar in my basement.  Well of course I cried, and then she handed me an envelope that said, "go to Jessica's room".  I went off up stairs full of excitement, as I opened the door there stood my very best friends from the Uk and their gorgeous daughters.  After lots of hugs and snot bubbles (that'd be me), they then handed me another envelope that said "go to the end bedroom".  I could not begin to imagine who'd or what'd be there in that room.  I walked nervously along the hallway and tried to open the door and was met with it being held shut from the other side.  After a knock at the door and telling whoever was behind it that I had the envelope and I was told to come to the door, it opened and there stood my mum and dad - well if I blew snot bubbles before they were nothing on this time, except being parents they hugged me back (instead of waiting until I'd cleaned my face "Neil").

Anyhoo, all of that took me by such surprise that I was completely taken aback and in a bit of a daze for weeks, okay it was August before I tried to function again.  The summer all just went so quickly that I took some photos of cakes that I'd done, but didn't do anything more with them.  I also got super busy as the school year started as I was solo president of the girls' PTA (much to my husband's chagrin), so that took up a lot of time and although I was still doing cakes here and there for friends, I didn't always take photos of them.

But, never say never.... I'm back again, not sure for how long this time, lots of irons in the fire but I've got quite a few pics to load onto the slideshow and maybe the odd post here and there again.

Scooby, Scooby Doo, where are you?

 

What a week!  My gorgeous little Jessica, aka Jedi, turned 8 on Friday - my dad, aka Grampsie also had his birthday on Friday, if I tell you that he was 60 the day that Jessica was born then you'll be able to work out his age without me having told you ha ha.



Mystery Machine à la Jessica!



I was surprised when back in December Jessica said that she wanted a Scooby Doo cake and birthday party, well not least because it was 4 months away but also because she's a fairly girly girl.  She never waivered from the Scooby Doo theme all the way along and it became very apparent that I was going to have to make the Mystery Machine - in a cake and 3D - Zoinks!

She also slipped into the cake equation that she wanted a vanilla pudding filling except in strawberry flavor!  No mean feat as Jello doesn't make a strawberry flavor pudding, or at least my local Publix doesn't carry it.  With necessity being the mother of invention, I doctored a vanilla pudding box - there's not a lot that heavy cream (double cream to my UKian followers) and a couple of drops of strawberry extract can't do to make something taste yummy ;-).  So, vanilla cake with strawberry filling done - just the small matter of making it resemble the Mystery Machine......



Shaggy?



Being the type of worker I am, I set about filling and carving the cake on Friday afternoon, yes, the same Friday of her birthday.  I'd already told her that the cake would be ready for her party on the Saturday and she was okay with that, not least because I made 2 dozen Scooby Doo cupcakes for her to take to school for a class lunchtime treat.





Anyway, back to the van.... I don't mind telling you all, I had a hell of a time with the fondant on Friday afternoon.  The reason of course was the weather - hot and humid are not friends of fondant.  It makes for a real sticky, soft mess to try and work with and mold.  It did actually tear once I got it on the cake and not too long ago I'd have ripped the lot off and started again but when you're against the clock and just want it finished you quickly learn that a well placed flower can hide quite a lot of things :-) 

I baked a 1/4 sheet cake - that's a 9 x 13 inch cake to most of us.  I cut it in half, so that I ended up with 2 x 6.5" by 9" cakes - it looked a little small at the time but I'm glad I didn't go any bigger.  With the cake filled and dirty iced and resting in the fridge out of the sticky Southern weather I set about coloring the fondant.  I just couldn't put it off any longer and it was time to get down to turning the cake into a van, and not just any van but possibly the most famous TV van (after the A-Team that is) in the world.

I'd printed out The Mystery Machine logo and sat for over half an hour painstakingly I mean lovingly cutting out each and every tiny letter with my exacto knife so that I could then lay the paper over the green fondant and cut out the spaces to then lay that over the orange fondant.  Well, suffice it to say it didn't work out!  I did mention the humid weather right?  Well the paper stuck to the green fondant and made a huge mess, I can't remember what I said exactly, but it was along the lines of 'Oh shucks, now I need to come up with another plan'!!!!!

I left that part and moved onto making the wheels, bumpers and headlights - instead of using vodka to mix with the lustre dust to get the chrome effect I drank the vodka and used lemon extract.  Plain water doesn't work as it makes the fondant sticky - same thing as the humidity but I'll stop going on about that.

With a few flowers and number 8's scattered around, it came out okay.  I didn't love the windows and wished I'd taken more time over cutting them and recessing them but truth be told, I was ready to throw the whole thing in the bin at this point and buy a sheet cake from Publix!  Jessica loved it though and that's what mattered.  A few parents who dropped off their daughter the following day all commented on it too, in a very positive way - or they did to my face at least....

Top view

Dodgy front view with foam support on full display

Don't look too closely at the bottom that's where the fondant puckered!



Boom boom aka lacka lacka boom

Are you all singing yet?  I've had this song in my head since early this morning (It's Was Not Was - Everybody Walk the Dinosaur), well after I got rid of the "Maggie and the Ferocious Beast" theme tune that is!

Life has been pretty busy of late - I've been baking almost weekly but I've just not had the time to post on here, or rather when I have had the time I've been snoring my head off on the couch instead.... like the song reference above, it's an age thing!

So, why dinosaurs on the brain? I made a dinosaur cake for my handsome little neighbor who is turning 6 and after much discussion and worry he settled on a green dinosaur cake - oh to be six again and having the only stress in your life being what cake you should choose.....

He asked for a chocolate flavored green dinosaur and that's what he got! 

I was humming and ha-ing (that is a word!) as to the best way to go about this one as it didn't need to be huge - just enough to feed 14 hungry boys who'd been bouncing all afternoon - perhaps I should have gone huge?? 

Eventually I settled on the Wilton Sports pan and me being me had enough cake batter to also bake a 3 inch high, 8 inch round chocolate cake ;-) 

I carved one of the ball halves to make his head, I think it's a boy, and the other half I sliced vertically and filled with the chocolatiest chocolate buttercream which elongated him into the perfect shape that I wanted.  Of course I acted like I knew this would happen. 

With him dirty iced in more of the CCBC (chocolatiest chocolate buttercream) he slept in the fridge overnight all nice and safe whilst I partied for St. Patrick's Day - I know any excuse right?

This morning I colored the fondant and covered him and cut out lots and lots of triangles and circles for his body armour, and made his tail and legs.  FYI - they don't have to be anatomically correct when you're going to eat them.

 I wasn't going to do much for his mouth, truth be told I'm not the best at doing mouths but I couldn't resist adding a cheeky tongue :-p

For the record, I hate these cake boards!

It's been a while...

since I last posted and I've completely blown my New Year's Resolution to post at least once every month - oh well, only another 2 weeks til I get to start it all over again ha ha.

Lots of little distractions have been going on that have meant I've not been doing much in the way of baking or at least not a huge amount.

This week though I did make a horse head cake.  Nothing as macabre as The Godfather horse head - of course this is what's been in my mind all week whenever I thought about doing it, but as it was a for an eight year old girl I'm sure it's not quite what they were after!

I originally thought I'd do a full 3D horse and set about baking 4 1/2 sheet cakes of red velvet but as the end cake was to feed 20 people and not 200 I decided to scale it down a bit - okay real reason is I panicked that I wouldn't get the proportions right!  I started trying to draw a horse sitting down, on Thursday night, (cake due for pick up on Friday), I am the proverbial lastminute.com worker - well the advantage to that is extremely fresh cake :-)  Anyway, I fast realized that I can't draw a horse, insert lots of expletives here any ones you like as I'm sure I used them all and I also made up a few new ones too.  So, with the reassuring voice of reason of my husband - what he actually said, "was that looks sh*t, why don't you just do the head?", I decided that I'd do a horse head and made a template and went from there.

Friday morning all was quiet, except for me munching on some Dove peppermint bark squares well a girl needs to keep her strength up, and my iPod blaring to keep me company, and I set to work on carving the sheet cakes into a horses head.  The photo's will follow - no I didn't take any as I was carving as I'd probably have either cut my fingers off (yes I did use the biggest bread knife I have in the style of Buddy from Carlos Bakery and no my delusion knows no bounds!) or got the lens covered in red velvet and cream cheese frosting crumbs.  Alright, real reason is that I made one huge unholy mess whilst carving.  There was cake everywhere and I do mean everywhere, there's no way I could have recorded that evidence.

I got the cake done in 3 hours, well all up until the bridle and then I had to head off and do some mummy duties at the 4th grade winter party at school and then come home and finish the cake before the swim team chauffeuring began - just one of the reasons I've not been caking recently. 

By some small miracle, I got the bridle rolled and cut and attached and removed, scrapped and redone all before it was time to hit the pool and I was quietly pleased with it I don't mind telling you.  It's not often I feel that way, I usually feel like I'm going to throw up before cakes are delivered or picked up but not this time, maybe it was just the exhaustion taking over.

The cake was picked up and they loved it.  And I had just enough time to descale the kitchen of red velvet cake before the girls' friend arrived for a sleepover - it's all go in the burbs!

A close up without his ears - they wouldn't fit in the box!

Not so close up and with the ears, although I think I like him without them and it's okay to say that because he can't hear me ha ha ha!

Christmas cakes coming up, watch this space....

It's a Jungle Out There!

And all of a sudden it's been months since I posted anything....  Hmmm, my New Year's Resolution was good for 4 months, maybe I can redeem myself for the last half of the year?

I made this cake back in April for a neighbor's friend's baby shower - are you keeping up with this?  The cake is carrot cake, filled with real cream cheese frosting, real as in not Neufchatel or fat free but real, honest to goodness you can't count the calories REAL cream cheese.  Well, when you're adding 2lbs of powdered sugar to the cream cheese a little thing like full fat really pales into insignificance!

The design for this cake came from the invitations for the shower - I was going to make a palm tree to go on top too, but well, I forgot - how bad is that?  However, I think it would have been too crowded to add a tree too, don't you?  I knew you'd agree.

For any eagle-eyes out there, the giraffe's legs are in the cake, they really are....

As my 7yr old learned when I was baking this cake, carrot cake has real carrots in it!  Which means it's healthy and does count as one of your 5 per day ;-)

The animals are all edible, (even the ears on the giraffe which are spaghetti noodles), they're a mix of gumpaste and fondant.  Everything else is fondant too.  If you can't eat it, I don't use it!

The initial request was for the finish to be cream cheese, which it started off as, but I just didn't like the shade of blue, so I covered it in fondant as I could never have let it leave my kitchen the way it was, told you right at the beginning I was a little OCD when it came to cakes!

♫ Here comes the bride....♫

or rather, the wedding cake....

Of course, way back last year when Marge asked if I'd make her wedding cake, I truly didn't think that I ever would actually do it!  I told her I'd love to make it and that wasn't a lie, I was more worried about COULD I make it!  I mean, cakes for birthdays are special, but if it's not exactly what you wanted it to be (not that anyone has complained or told me this, at least not to my face), you usually have another go at getting it right the following year.  Not so much with a wedding cake, it's pretty much a one shot deal, unless of course your name is Kody Brown who currently has 4 wives and therefore 4 weddings, but that's a whole other conversation.....

I had planned many a sit down with Marge and her Stu, Stu BB as he's known in this household but for one reason or another we didn't really get to do that.  So, whilst they were here for another event (one which shall remain nameless as my team got beaten!) I prepared some cake and various fillings for them to try and low and behold 4 weeks before the wedding we had a cake flavor and fillings for each of the tiers, phew! 

We'd talked about some designs and colors etc in the passing but nothing really that formal, nor concrete. 2 weeks before the wedding I managed to tie the bride (aka Marge but I won't be able to call her the bride forever, will I?) down to color and final'ish design for her cake.

All systems go... well after the PTA Spring Carnival that I was heavily involved in both the planning and execution (and believe me I did think there was going to be an execution as the night drew to a close...) which happened to be wedding minus 1 week.  Now, this was a hectic time and tbh I think it's best that it was like that as I didn't have time to dwell and worry about the best way to do the cake until the day before the wedding.  Actually, that's a little fib.. I did bake one of the layers on the Thursday morning, but then had to clear up and head off to the bachelorette party (hen do) which started at lunch time, wonder who organised that so early in the day.... ahem.... Anyway from there to a PTA meeting in the evening and home to fill the tier that I'd baked earlier. 

You'd think with all of that activity I'd be fast asleep until the Jessica alarm came bounding in, but alas no.  3am - bing wide awake so I got up and started in on making the gumpaste flowers and some other decoration bits that needed time to dry.  It was actually quite theraputic in the wee hours of the morning not quite so much come 7am when the rest of the house wakened.  The girls were excited as they were heading off for Spring Break to Myrtle Beach, so I cleared away again (for that read I shoved everything to one end of the table and put the rest on the dining table out of the way) and spent some time with my babies before they headed off for the week.

Friday I got the other layers baked, filled and covered with fondant ready for the decoration.  Thankfully it was an evening wedding and the earliest I was allowed to deliver the cake was 4.30pm so I had lots of time on Saturday too to finish up.  Unfortunately not enough time to fully clear away the horrendous mess I'd made in the kitchen, dining room and breakfast table before showering and getting ready for the wedding and cake delivery.  Funnily enough it was all still sitting there waiting for me when I got home too :-(

We got the cake delivered to the venue and they were still setting up which meant we had to wait for almost 10 minutes which consequently put Stu in a cold panic that he may not have time to get to the English Pub before the ceremony started (but we did).  Got it all in place, in it's beautiful setting at the front of the dining room and off we set.  I was really nervous until I met the florist on the way out and he said 'awesome cake'. I'm thinking he's seen quite a few cakes in his time and this settled my nerves almost as much as that icy cold pint of Stella :-)

Okay, are you ready for some pics? In true style of my photography, the pictures are pretty dire, but I think you can still see the cake okay, you can, can't you?

From the front

From the top

All 3 tiers are vanilla cake.  The top and middle tier are filled with white chocolate buttercream and the bottom tier is filled with whipped milk chocolate buttercream layered with dark chocolate ganache.



From the back....
Oh, and the back has some lego panels with the lego bricks tumbling out, naturally ;-)



It's not just the Queen of England that has 2 birthdays....

Jessica's official birthday is on Wednesday which is a pretty tough day to coordinate for a party, so we went for it this past Saturday.  She had her 7th party at Splatter Rocks which is a pottery, painting, tie-dye, mosaic place.  The venue was pretty cool the actual party kind of lacking but that's from the paying adult's perspective - always a harsh critic where dosh in involved!  From the girls' point of view, everyone seemed to enjoy it.  The majority painted a tile which will have holes drilled in and ribbon threaded through for them to hang where ever they want to, or rather wherever their parents say they can.... Other choices were a unicorn, flower, turtle or snake.

Anyway, less about the actual party and onto the cake.  Jessica is a fairly tough customer when it comes to cake.  Most children choose chocolate or vanilla cake - not the Jedi, she requested marble cake with a red velvet & vanilla cake combination (she originally wanted rv & white chocolate but changed her mind).  The cake turned out pretty well.  Any bakers out there will know that the consistency of red velvet cake batter is waaaaaay runnier than regular yellow cake batter, mostly as it has vegetable oil as the fat and not butter!  Still, I did it and although it looked a little pink in places, there were definite pockets of white and red so I'll take that as a success.  The design request was for a lego themed cake, but different to the lego cake I'd done before - okay then....

This was a pretty last minute cake in that I started decorating at 8.20pm on Friday night (cake due next morning).  There's been so much going on recently outside of baking - now I've mentioned this before, but I really do do other things besides baking and making an almighty mess in the kitchen - that I really only had Friday night to get on and do the cake.  Alright, throw in a healthy dose of procrastination and you get the picture...

So, with the girls in bed, I started.  The marshmallow fondant just wouldn't co-operate.  I don't know if it was the temperature outside (it was 84F here on Friday), or if I just didn't nuke the marshmallows for long enough, whatever the reason, I had it on and off the cake several times before wanting to throw it all out of the window.  I even contemplated throwing the whole lot out, cake and all and buying one on Saturday morning from Publix, such was my frustration!  However, I put my hormones back in check and got on with it, just as all self-respecting mums do.  I wasn't particularly happy with the end result of the green marshmallow fondant but well, sometimes you've just got to go with what you've got!  The bricks were fun to do, and yes, yet again, I cut them all out to the sizes of real lego bricks.  (I'm thinking of making a silicon mould for these little things (not exactly what I was calling them on Friday night but that was the sentiment), I mean, really how hard can that be?  I'm almost positive there will be a youtube video, if not several, on how to do it.)  A saving grace was that Jessica didn't want her cake to look like the previous lego cake, which meant way less dots to cut and apply individually which was a time saver.  As it was, I finished the cake at 1.30am and after a very rough tidy and clean of my work area I hit the hay. 

6.45am Saturday morning, my bedroom door flew open and there was Jessica asking if she could a) see her cake and b) was it time to get ready yet?  No was the answer to both. 
6.50am - Jessica again, wanting to go downstairs to see the cake - reply = yes, but don't touch it!  Squeals of delight and awesome rang through the house from my little Southern Belle (oh yes, she's an English born all American Gal!).

We got to the party with everything remembered, except for cutlery to eat the cake with, all that had RSVP'd arrived and a fun time was had by all.  Especially Jessica who was completely overwhelmed (and just a tad obnoxious - only I am allowed to say that!) with all of the wonderful gifts she received - thank you to all who came and helped celebrate Jessica turning 7.



Jessica's 7th Birthday Party cake



Of course, thoughts have now turned to what she's going to have for her 'real' birthday cake for her official birthday! 

What a curious plan.....

For most of Feb (okay the last week of it) and 1st week of March, I summoned all of my sneakiness and subterfuge (pretty easy really for a Gemini) and managed to throw a surprise bridal shower for my friend Marge who is, spookily enough, getting married ♥

Being as how she's marrying an Englishman, I thought it only fitting that the shower be some form of tea party.  I checked this out with one of her colleagues (sneakiness part one) and she suggested a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and that's exactly what I went with. 

Operation MHTP phase one was to rid all local Goodwill Stores and by local I mean within a 20 mile radius of my house, of all of their mis-matched teacups, saucers, teapots and side plates.  Phase 2 was making mad hatter hats - well the youtube video I watched made it look so easy and it only took her 5 minutes - suffice it to say it took me a little longer :-)  I did have to make 4 of them though.  The initial plan was to make 2 -one for the bride and one for me but once the girls saw them of course they needed, not wanted, one each too, hence 4! 

Phase 3 was the making and baking of food, my favorite bit.  For a traditional tea party finger sandwiches, with the crusts cut off are a must, naturally!  There were a couple of platters of sandwiches, 2 quiches, kahlua & chocolate fudge (YUM), white cupcakes with raspberry coulis and white chocolate buttercream - nuff said, and caramel cupcakes with caramel icing, oh and a chocolate swiss roll with raspberry & whipped cream center. I'm not kidding when I say we had enough food :-)

Here are a few pics, these were taken by Jessica who was chief paparazzi until she was allowed food and then we never saw her again and that's the reason there are no late night photo's of the shower, truly it is....



Head table part 1



Need I say more?

 



 

The bride to be (or BB) with her usual wine glass!









Catch up!

Well, that resolution lasted well :-)  Broken in the 2nd month!  But, that's not to say I've not been baking, I have, I've just not been that great at either taking photo's of the delicious creations or blogging (should that be bragging? don't answer that) about them.

Let's see, what did I make in February? .... I did a last minute Superbowl cake, which was red velvet and cream cheese whipped frosting, and looked like well a football field!  This year it was the Greenbay Packers going head to head with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  The names were at either end of the field with their logos in fondant - but I didn't remember to take photo's of this, d'oh!  So you'll have to take my word for it that it looked pretty good and smelled even better!

Of course it was valentines day too last month, so for the girls classes I made cake pops and jammy dodgers with heart shapes instead of circles cut out - you'll need to take my word for the jammy's though as I didn't get a photo of them (are you seeing a pattern here?).  The cake pops I did though.  These little yummy things were chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream and pops to look like mini cupcakes.  The bottoms were dipped in milk chocolate and the tops in pink and then scattered with mini hearts ♥.

February was then consumed with a variety of girls scout and school (PTA) things... and planning a surprise Mad Hatter themed Bridal Shower for bride to be Marge ♥

Moving along swiftly to March....

MOM... Phineas and Ferb are laying on the grass doing nothing!

Lazy Days of summer with Phineas & Ferb



Wow - 3 posts in the one month, I am keeping to my new year's resolution :-) 

This week I've had a lot of fun making a Phineas & Ferb cake.  Now of course I'd heard of them, my girls watch Disney channel in between the adverts of all the other channels that they surf whilst watching the one they're really watching!  But, I did have do to a little research on them and that meant hours of web surfing flickr.com for ideas and other cake blogs & websites - not too arduous a task except well a few things did suffer because of it, namely the laundry, and well is it really terrible to serve reheats for dinner just one night of the week?  Stu seems to think so!

Of course I've still no idea who's who except for Perry the Platypus and that's only because he's a dead give away.  He might well be Agent P in the cake but I'd know that tail anywhere, lol.

As with most cakes I'm asked to do, my first thought is, okay this is going to be a challenge.  Usually followed by what the F was I thinking, how am I going to do that?  And, then I settle into it and color the fondant and gumpaste and get in the zone.  Getting into said zone absolutely always involves loud, good music (and this isn't subjective, my music is good!), no children no matter how good they are at helping and a clear space so that I can spread all of my stuff out and be able to see it and still spend 10 mins searching on the table for it because it is so cluttered - what can I say?  I'm messy. 

I made the triangly headed one first, I'll call him Phineas ;-).  The head was the easiest part, a square fondant cutter cut again to get the triangle and the bottom of  a massive icing tip to curve the mouth, so far so good.  Then it was onto Ferb.... hmmmm not so straight forward.  I rolled the fondant/gumpaste mix into what I'll call a sausage shape and not what it truly looked like(!), several times until it genuinely looked like it could become a person.  I tried 'glueing' fondant ears onto the side of his head but they looked plain daft so I pulled a little out of the sides of his head and well, I think they looked alright.  His nose was easy as was his mouth.  I also made the tree trunk out of chocolate marshmallow fondant and marked it to resemble bark - it really does okay?!  Feeling quite pleased with myself I estimated that the amount of time I'd need to make the rest of the bodies, leaves, and toadstools was (as per usual) no where near the true time it'd take!  End result, all time went to the cake and the Brownie & Daisy movie night party had non-homemade snacks and candy for dessert - they definitely didn't complain.

Alright, ready for some more pictures?




 

Agent P





Ariel view - I love that Agent P is hiding behind the tree!



♫ Pink Wheels keep on turning...♫

Okay, so a little poetic licence if you please....and yes, I'm now singing Sweet Home Alabama and probably will be for the rest of the day - you are so lucky you're not in the same room as me ;-)

Ever since I made the beaver cake for Nicholas, Abby has been thinking of a cool cake to come up with for her birthday and this one didn't fail - a rollerskate!  I was very excited to make this one - I know I'm easily pleased but it was a very fun cake to do.  It's a lemon pound cake stacked and carved from a 1/2 sheet cake.  Honestly, there's no end to my delusional state but it worked, and pretty darn well too if I say so myself!

Everything is edible, the wheels are rice crispie treats (home made of course) covered in fondant, the silver is lustre dust mixed with lemon juice - often I use vodka for this as it dries quickly and doesn't leave a taste but well perhaps not for a 7yr old's cake.... Okay, so the only bits not edible, or rather not recommended edible are the polystyrene blocks under the front and back ends to help suspend the cake.

Colours were chosen by the birthday girl and for a roller disco party I think they rock.  There were also pink & purple cupcakes in vanilla to complement the skate but again you'll have to take my word for that.  Well y'all have seen cupcakes before, right?

Is there an app for 'I love my iphone'?

Here goes one of my New Year's resolutions, that I haven't yet broken or abandoned... I'm going to make at least one post per month, fingers crossed here goes....

It's been a strange week here in the 'burbs of Atlanta.  It snowed last Sunday and we were all excited at the prospect of no school on Monday - we got our wish, five-fold - school's been out all week, the roads have been treacherous for the most part of that too.  The end result has been cabin fever, which is a very real and very traumatic form of psychosis!

A good part to being stuck home is not the endless cleaning that I could have been doing, where's the fun in that y'all?  But, I had time to make Stu's birthday cake.  What other kind of cake could I have made for the guy who has his iphone attached to his hand most of the waking day, but an iPhone.  I had fun doing this one.  It's all on a x3 scale - yes I measured meticulously and then set about cutting out the squares for the background apps and then making the icons to go in them, and no I don't have a cutter that's 2.7cm square they just don't exist!  The only cutter I had was for the music notes, all others are originals by my hand.  There are a few details missing, i.e. the chrome trim & buttons on the side and the white writing under each app.  These were the extra supplies I was going to pick up this week, along with his other birthday gifts but are all still in the stores right now as the roads have been horribly icy.

The cake is 13.5" x 6.9", 3 layer chocolate orange cake with chocolate orange whipped buttercream.  Cake balls with the trimmings to come.  The girls are making the cake balls, it was the trade off for them not 'helping' with the big cake, this might be the only post for January as I'll be cleaning the kitchen into February (and as always I had to google how to spell Feb!).....

Thanks for looking!

♫ Fa la la la la....♫

Where has this year gone?  It's now December for crying out loud!  So, with time a-ticking it was time yesterday to wedge the laundry room door closed, out of sight out of mind and all that and get on with doing some holiday cakes.  I've started small with some cupcakes - well they take way more time than anything else as everything has to be so small to fit on the top.  For that read, they take more time which means less time to do laundry, are you with me now?

The cakes themselves are regular yellow cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant tops.  Now I've been using this same recipe for a good while now, so much so that I can make it without the instructions, smarty pants huh?  Well the fall usually comes after some silly show of pride and fall I did, or rather the 6" cake did.... I used 1% fat milk in the recipe instead of whole milk (that's what I usually use).  Well you know it's the season of over indulgence and I thought if I could save a few cals here and there it'd all be to the good.  Regardless that the recipe has 12oz of butter and there's another 6oz in the buttercream, ahem... Anyway, the recipe like all scientific formulae didn't like being messed around.  The cake took way longer to bake, of course I kept checking it every 5, then 10 mins past the time it should have been ready and yes I ended up with a divot in the centre of it, d'oh!  So what did I do?  Well, what any self-respecting baker would do.  I cut the cake in half, filled the sink hole with the oh so yummy buttercream and turned it upside down for the cut side to be decorated, 'ta da'.  And, yes, it does completely, utterly and unquestioningly blow away the calories and the reason for trying to reduce them in the first place, but what the H, it's Christmas, or nearly.  The Coca-cola ads have been on so it's definitely on its way!

Everything is edible and everything was hand cut/made by yours truly.  How cute are these?  I've got loads more designs to come, these are just a taster but first I need to get on and do a baby shower order due for tomorrow.  Pop back early next week to see what else has been going on in my kitchen.

Here they are individually too.

'lego, lego, lego what's goin' on 'ere en?

It's been a while since I've posted but that doesn't mean I've not been baking! What it does mean is that I've been going from one cake and week to the next without really knowing how I've got there!

This week I've been making lots and lots of lego bricks out of fondant. Now, you'd think that with the amount of Lego stuff out there they'd have a mold of some kind but no, nope, nada! Each brick on the cakes, oh yes there are 2 of them, are hand made/cut and to within a cat's whisker in dimensions of the real sized bricks. Now of course I could have stayed with just the one size of brick, but where's the fun in that? So, a variety of sizes completes the look.

The first cake is a cupcake pull apart cake, a first for me, with a frozen buttercream transfer, another first - gotta love a challenge! and with a few of the fondant bricks scattered for good measure.

I was intending to take more photo's of each step but I got carried away and so all there is to show is the before and after. To get a true idea of how it all went add whatever sweary words you like and it'll be as though you were right in the kitchen with me. 




Before....

 

After



  

  


















The 2nd cake is a 10 inch square - I could have sworn I had a 10inch square pan but it turns out that I didn't (and still don't). I cut a 12 inch square down to 10 - cake pops coming later today with the leftovers = yummy! It's a rich chocolate cake with whipped(Madagascan) vanilla buttercream - the buttercream is whipped, not the Madagascans! Covered in white fondant before being decked out in the lego mat (hand made by yours truly), logo, name plaque and border bricks around the other 3 sides. The best bit about these cakes? Aiden loved them. His little face was a picture when I delivered them this morning. I had purposefully left off a few bricks so that he could size them up with the real McCoy but before he got close to doing that he'd eaten one and was ready for more. That was my cue to leave and let Mom manage that one :-)

Sophie's turning 8!

The end of the summer vacations are nigh. 11.5 weeks and we've all survived it unscathed, well except for my baking or rather lack of it. Temps of +100ºF have meant that I've been poolside for most of the summer. Honestly it's all a girl can do to keep cool in those temps without the oven adding to it, of course the cold beer helps too ;-)

The start of a new school term also means it's Sophie's birthday, this year it's the day before school so we had her sleepover party last night (Friday). 7 girls partied, 6 stayed over and had a blast. Who knew that after pizza, cookies, cake, candy, more fizzy than the World of Coca-cola, and 2 movies that there wouldn't be time for tattoos, nail painting and karaoke? Lights were out at midnight, lights back on again at 5 minute intervals there after until 12.55am and they were warned to sleep or they'd be separated - sometimes being a grumpy Scot. with wild hair has it's advantages, lol, but it did the trick. Silence fell until 8.45am and I was delighted. After a big breakfast of fruit, croissants, pan au chocolat and juice - okay not so much fruit but I did try, they went off to complete total destruction of the basement phase 2!

Sophie had asked for a lemon/blueberry pound cake with a buttercream finish, using light pink, dark pink and light purple. This is the same girl who 2 months ago tried to tell me she was a tomboy, yeah right! And that's what she got. The buttercream finish is worse than shoddy as I had next to no time left to actually ice the cake, all of the time went on the very fiddly but fun gumpaste popcorn box & popcorn, the pizza, the heads & hands (with painted fingernails), not so much on the sleeping bags, I did mention they were fiddly right? As usual, I was lastminute.com with the cake but it tasted good and that for me is the main thing.

Bottom tier of the cake before it was smothered in white chocolate buttercream and topped with 2 more layers of cake and cream = yummy!

A bird's eye view!

The whispering and gossiping of a slumber party!

"So she said, that I said that you said..."

"No way!"

Yesterday I played with beavers.....

That sounds so wrong on so many levels, but it is the truth! What's this got to do with cakes? well, everything the cake on order was a Beaver Dam birthday cake. So, I spent the morning making beavers out of chocolate marshmallow fondant (of course I made the choco-MMF the previous night) and then a gazillion sticks and logs too! This was a fab cake to do, not only because I'd never been asked to make one like this before but also there are not many images of beaver dam cakes out there so much of this was my own idea - believe me, 'google' beaver cake and see what hits you get.

***Disclaimer*** I take no responsibility for the content that the google hit will give on that search!

Whilst modelling the beaver heads out of fondant, I learned that I can actually do Pooh Bear, Arthur, cows, pigs and a big toe so a very successful morning! With the heads, bodies (with limbs) and big criss-cross tails complete I spent the next 4 hrs at the pool - well it's Georgia and 36ºC, kids are off school and going bananas in the house as I'm fiddling with fondant! I did give in and give them some to play with though. Sophie made an eye-pod (copied from a birthday card I bought but don't tell her I remember that!) and Jessica made beavers on their bellies swimming which look really good but .... bad mother alert... not good enough to put on a cake that someone's paying for! So, today we're (Jessica and I) making another cake for her to put her beavers on, thankfully it's father's day tomorrow.

Anyhoo, here's a pic, or 2 of the beaver dam cake.



It's a 10 inch marble cake filled with vanilla buttercream and iced in buttercream, piping gel for the water and chocolate marshmallow fondant for the beavers & logs.

Underneath the mango tree....

No, you'll be pleased to know that no eyesight or indeed white bikini's were abused in the making of the following cake productions, lol.

A friend dropped round a whole load of mangoes and after we'd had them in a fruit salad, smoothied them, diced them to make salsa, the only thing left to do with them was make cakes - or rather mango (with a hint of lime) buttercream atop some spiced cupcakes.

With the cupcakes baked and cooled x 12 and a little 6" round to make cake balls or bites if you prefer, it was time to get the mango buttercream on the go.

Mango Buttercream

1. 2-3 yellow ripe mangoes, diced
2. juice of one lime

Heat the mango with lime juice over a medium heat until the mango softens and easily breaks down with a wooden spoon - depending on how ripe the mango was to begin with this will be around 5 minutes-ish, any longer and the fruit wasn't ripe enough :-(

Blitz in a blender until smooth and leave aside to cool.

3. Buttercream - I use the easy 1 part butter to 2 parts icing sugar (powdered sugar if you're in the US) with a few drops of vanilla extract and beat the bejesus out of in the kitchen aid.

Add in the cooled mango purée until it's all smooth and then add more icing sugar until you've got the right consistency and pipe away!




Of course the orange and yellow non pareils are not essential but....


And for the cake balls... I had my 2 trusty assistants helping with these today (7 weeks and 6 days until the summer holidays are over), so go easy on any critiques! They had the job of rolling the cake balls and then dipping them and covering them in the chocolate (for anyone not in the know, a cake ball is crumbled up cake mixed with buttercream (or any frosting for that matter) and dipped in chocolate). My job was to scoop them out again and shake the excess 500g of chocolate off of each of them! Still it passed an hour or so, well 3 if you count clean up but I got to do that part alone.

When life gives you lemons, make cake!

The sun has been shining here which makes for a very hot kitchen and not so much baking, but.... I did manage to do one cake this week. This was for my friends at Moms Club for our end of year banquet. After much thought a lemon cake was requested so a lemon cake is what they got in the form of a 10 inch round, 4 layer lemon sponge with lemon buttercream filling. Avocado coloured (not flavoured, although...) buttercream with fondant dots and just a tiny bit of pizzazz on top, because we're worth it!

Don't look too closely at the pic. as this cake was in the wars before it made it to the restaurant, nothing unsanitary of course but a few knocks and dints as I drove along a 55mph limit at 40mph with horns a-tooting and people waving at me with just the one finger, I guess their other fingers were busy with driving? The wires were swinging and one of the balls dropped off and dinged the top! I won't say who put their finger in the side of it whilst moving it either... but it's all about the taste and that got a resounding thumbs up!

Footballs coming up this weekend as Pompey (Portsmouth FC to give them their proper name!) take on Chelsea in the FA Cup Final - ♫ Play up Pompey, Pompey Play UP ♫

Life's a beach....

This week I've been making the biggest cake I have ever been asked to make. It's for a beach themed Bar Mitzvah - that's the only direction I was given. I went and met with the mom ordering the cake and learned that her son is very much into Chess so I tried to tie that into the sand-castle theme. There are also 60 mini cupcakes iced with aqua blue buttercream and sprinkled with blue sanding sugar but you'll need to just take my word for that as I've boxed them up ready for collection.

This is a 16", 12" and 8" square cakes construction of rich chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling.

Whilst typing this one up, I got the call to say they were on their way - nervous doesn't cover how I was feeling. But, I needn't have been, they loved it and to show how much they did the whole family got out of the car to come see it in my dining room, lol. It's all now safely tucked into the trunk of their car and en route to the W for the celebrations to begin - Mazel Tov!

Speedy Slipper!

I received an email on Thursday from a friend saying she had a friend who wanted a 'slipper' cake made for the coming Saturday, i.e. 1.5 days away! I was on my way out to a PTA meeting, because I do get involved in things that aren't cake related - honestly. Anyway, no email from said friend so I presumed she'd found one somewhere else. Roll on Friday morning. I got the email... 'Can you make a cake for me and I need it for 6pm tomorrow night?' I called the lady and had a chat and was all set to tell her no way totally impossible but she sounded lovely so guess what??? Yip, Friday I baked a 1/2 sheet marble cake, filled it with scrummy vanilla buttercream and carved it into a slipper. Now thankfully it was just a regular 'pj's' type slipper and not an intricate cinderella-esque one or I may have still been working on it now. Anyway, a white slipper with black and hot pink was ordered. Here's what I came up with.....






Of course I could have stuck with plain fondant stripes but where's the fun in that, this is for a sassy 6 year old (I have one of those myself!), so 1/2 drum of black sanding sugar 1.5 hrs and a hell of a mess later, the cake was finished. I did take a dry soft artist brush and gently sweep the stray bits of sugar off the white areas (I know, I think I'm slightly OCD but I can assure you it's only where the cakes are concerned, don't ever look in my closet!) but soon realised I was fighting a losing battle.

Pick up is in the next hour or so, just hope she likes it!